Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1887-11-26
AaNptinn Tonlhs.
london Timesl

iLtllNu NINfN.i
The Society of Biblical Archaeology
ope1led its eighteenth session on Tues
day evening. Thepaper Of the evening
was read 10y Mr. Eenouf's second in
command, Mr.. Z. A. Wallis Bulge, VI.
A.. who was sent by the trustees OF the
British Museum last November to re-
port on the excavations made at Aswan
(thc ancient Sycnel by Major General
Sir +. Greufell during 1885 and 1856.
Aswan is in latitude u 3 25", on the
RIGHT or east bank Of the Nile, a very lit
tie north of the Tropic Of Cancer, be-
inc the last southern frontier town of
Egypt, separating il from Nubia. The
Egyptlan name is Englished the
opener" and it denoted originally tine
island. the Isle of Elephantine, the
elephant city, which was the metropolis
of the first name or county Of Upper
Egypt. and its gods were the Triad,
Chnem, Sati. and Sept. Eratosthenes,
Potolemv, and Strabo all say it was on
the Tropic of Cancer. the sign of the
summer solstice, and there was a famous
well there into which the sun, at the
acme of that season, sent his rays per
pendicularly lighting it up III every part
and casting no kind of shadow.
OF the beautiful fire-hued granite Of
Svene the finest obelisks were made,
such as the pair made 10y the masculine
Oneen Hatshcputiu, the sister Of
Ibothmes H., OF the great eighteenth
dynasty. whom some think the Pharaoh
III the Exodus, TO her Father Amen, the
Tbeban Sungod. There every travel
Ter wonders at the still unfinished
obelsk seen emerging from the
quarry, and gets an mixing how
il was that three years were
taken up in hewing out such a granite
needle l15 feet long by II feet square,
floating il down the Nile and setting 1t
uprioht. Her next successor, Thothmos
III. who first set up the needle now on
the Thames ombankment, may well have
found II hard TO outyie his immediate
predecessor the Amazon Pharaoness, al
though she would never aiiix to her
g3cisi 0he mystic cartouche in which her
name was inclosedl the feminine pro-
noun.
OF the series OF tombs, all excavated
at his own expense 10y Sir i. Gren!ell,
aud all of which were patiently exam
jned and scrupulously reported on, 10y
far the most interesting aud historically
precious were those belonging to two dill
ferent periods, both almost inconceiva-
blv removed in point of time from those
dating from the ago OF Moses, and sun
dercd by a no less yawning gulf OF CEN
turies from each Other-those dated 10y
the UlciSis 60 use the Egyptian word
handed down to us in the Greek text OF
uorapollo. in place ofthe Napoleonic bar
barism cartouche, of the dynasties num-
bered by the honest Ptolemaic ma
tive Egyptian hierlrch and scholar
Name hoth, or " Daring of Thoth, the
cod OF letters, as his name imports, the
twelfth and the sixth respectively With
the twelfth he began the second book of
his only fragmentarily- preserved great
work, following in this the Turin Phara-
geological papyrus, written somewhere
in the twelfth century before our era,
and published by the late sir Gardiner
Wilkinson. That this papyrus was the
very book shown by the Egyptian priests
TO Herodotus, the father OF history, there
can be no reasonable doubt It's first
column is, happily, the best-preseryed OF
all, and confirms almost miraculously
the great Greeks nnmberof 1880" Pha-
raohs from Menes, the human founder